Friday, June 5, 2015

Queen
Elizabeth II - is the Queen of 16 of the 53 member states in
the Commonwealth of Nations. Upon her
accession in Feb 1952, Elizabeth became
Head of the Commonwealth and queen regnant of seven independent Commonwealth
countries: the United Kingdom, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, South Africa,
Pakistan and Ceylon. Her coronation service the following year was the first to
be televised.

In
our own Nation, this man after his role in freedom struggle, returned to
prominence in State politics in the late 1960s. 1974 ushered in a year of high
inflation, unemployment and lack of supplies and essential commodities. Nav
Nirman Andolan movement of Gujarat asked him
to lead a peaceful agitation. On 8th April 1974, aged 72, he led a silent
procession at Patna. The procession was lathi charged. On 5 June 1974,
Jayaprakash addressed a large crowd at Gandhi Maidan in Patna. He declared,
" after 27 years of freedom, people of this country are wracked by hunger,
rising prices, corruption... oppressed by every kind of injustice... it is a
Total Revolution we want, nothing less!" In 1974, he led the students'
movement in the state of Bihar which gradually developed into a popular
people's movement known as the Bihar Movement.

It is
‘Jayaprakash Narayan’ (Harsu Dayal Srivastava) popularly referred to as JP or
Lok Nayak (Hindi for The People's Hero),
Indian independence activist, social reformer and political leader,
remembered especially for leading the mid-1970s opposition against Prime
Minister Indira Gandhi. In 1999, he was
posthumously awarded the Bharat Ratna, India's highest civilian award, in
recognition of his social work. Other awards include the Magsaysay award for
Public Service in 1965. The Patna airport is also named after him. The largest
hospital run by the Delhi government and the teaching hospital of the famous
Maulana Azad Medical College, Lok Nayak Jayaprakash Hospital, is also named
after him.

Away in UK, a
‘behind-the-scenes’ rehearsal of how the BBC will handle the death of Queen
Elizabeth II ended with an apology Wednesday after one of its reporters
mistakenly tweeted that the British monarch had passed away. Ahmen Khawaja, a reporter working for the
BBC's Urdu-language service, posted on Twitter that the 89-year-old had been
taken to hospital. A second tweet announced: "Queen Elizabrth [sic] has
died." This incorrect tweet was "swiftly" deleted, the BBC said.
The initial report was picked up by media outlets including CNN Newsource and
German newspaper Bild. However, when NBC News alerted Buckingham Palace to the
tweets, a spokesman said that the queen was not only alive but carrying out
public engagements.

It is
not clear exactly how the mistake happened but the U.K.'s publicly-funded
broadcaster was staging an internal drill on Wednesday to examine its readiness
for the queen's death, a routine event staged by many news organizations. The BBC subsequently has apologised. About Queen’s annual health check-up, Buckingham Palace
said. "This was a routine, pre-scheduled appointment. The queen has now
left the hospital." The queen 89
now, has cut back her public duties in
recent years with heir-to-the-throne Prince Charles taking on more official
roles. When she was hospitalised in March 2013 with symptoms of
gastroenteritis, it was the first time she had needed hospital treatment in a
decade.

Back
home, Jayaprakash Narayan died in Patna, on 8 October 1979, three days before
his 77th birthday. In March 1979, while he was in hospital, his death had been
erroneously announced, causing a brief wave of national mourning, including the
suspension of parliament and regular radio broadcasting, and the closure of
schools and shops. When he was told about the gaffe a few weeks later, he
reportedly smiled !!

It is
not perhaps uncommon – the premature obituary !
We often read about that of arms
manufacturer Alfred Nobel, whose obituary condemed him as a "merchant of
death" that reportedly leading him
to create the Nobel Prize, to many others.
Such publications could have been due to multiple causes including :
accidental publication, brush with death, hoax, frauds, faked deaths, impostors,
missing in action, drowning to name confusion !!

Only
recently there were reports of the Queen enjoying the June sunshine in Windsor
Great Park in the morning as she geared
up for yet another busy week. Her Majesty, who turns 90 next year, was spotted
riding her faithful black Fell pony, Carltonlima Emma, accompanied by head
groom Terry Pendry. Her Majesty wearing one of her trademark silk scarves, looked
relaxed and happy. A rider since the age of four, when her father George VI
presented her with a Shetland pony named Peggy, the Queen has never worn a
helmet - reportedly because of her hair.